Professional resilience strategies utilized by occupational therapists to combat occupational stressors in health and social care settings

Purpose: The adoption of professional resilience strategies can foster and maintain career longevity in health and social care. This study investigates the professional resilience strategies used by occupational therapists to mitigate occupational stressors in workplaces and enhance career longevity. Method: Cross-sectional survey. Participants were occupational therapy practitioners with two or more years work experience. Results: The survey was completed by 494 occupational therapists from 29 countries. The most used strategies were: Maintaining a belief in the value of occupational therapy, taking time for reflection on positive outcomes, using personal time management strategies, and engagement in informal and formal professional support networks. Conclusions: While health and social care workplaces inherently include occupational stressors, implementation of professional resilience strategies at service-level practitioner-level strategies and education-level assist in mitigating stressors and strengthen professional resilience. The identification of the strategies experienced occupational therapists use to counter occupational stressors and maintain professional resilience may enable practitioners and organizations to adopt effective strategies. For employers, cultivation of work-based professional resilience strategies which mitigate occupational stressors could improve the retention of occupational therapists in the workforce.